When mainstream Hindi cinema is preoccupied with romance, comedy, horror and action, stories about sisters and brothers are very rare.
Vasan Bala has made a first-of-its-kind film where the leads play siblings, notes Aseem Chhabra.
It was 53 years ago when I saw Dev Anand's Hare Rama Hare Krishna in which an older brother traveled all the way from Canada to Nepal to 'rescue' his sister who had joined a group of drugged out, Dum Maro Dum singing hippies.
The two were separated as kids when their parents' marriage ended in divorce.
But their emotional bond remained strong as we heard in the oft repeated Anand Bakshi/R D Burman song in Kishore Kumar's voice Phoolon Ka Taaron Ka.
Even though Dev Anand had a love interest in the film, the charming Mumtaz, HRHK was primarily a brother-sister story, a theme rarely explored in Hindi cinema.
Ten years earlier, Dev Anand appeared in Raj Khosla's Bombai Ka Babu where he played a criminal who pretended to be Suchitra Sen's character's long-lost brother and the heir to the family inheritance.
When his secret was revealed, the two fell in love.
But in end, Dev Anand's character got his 'sister' married off, with Mukesh singing in the background the heartbreaking song Chal Ri Sajni Ab Kya Soche.
In recent years, one of the most convincing brother-sister subplots, with a case of rather unique casting was in Zoya Akhtar's Dil Dadakne Do.
Ranveer Singh and Priyanka Chopra played siblings and they even had an unusual track in a film that was otherwise over-populated with supporting characters.
In the current times, when mainstream Hindi cinema is preoccupied with romance, comedy, horror and action, stories about sisters and brothers are very rare. So with Jigra, Vasan Bala has made a first-of-its-kind film where the leads play siblings.
In casting Alia Bhatt as the sister and the one-film old, charming newcomer Vedang Raina as her brother, Jigra has a believable plot line.
In fact, before I went to watch the film, the publicity images and clips I had seen had actually led me to imagine the two actors were related and even resembled each other.
Satya (Bhatt) and Ankur (Raina) are orphans.
Their mother dies early on and we see their father jumping off from the apartment's balcony.
Satya being older takes the charge to raise and protect her brother.
There is a playfulness among the siblings, when they take a break from a family wedding to play basketball.
There are also tensions sometimes since Satya can be overprotective.
But then during a business trip to a fictional South-East Asian country close to Malaysia, Ankur is framed on a drug possession charge and given a death sentence. The first person he reaches out to is his sister.
Bala, one of the nicest film-makers in the industry, struggled after his first feature Peddlers was not released.
Since then, he has made a couple of films -- the quirky, fun martial arts film Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota, which won the People's Choice Award in the Midnight Madness section at the Toronto International Film Festival, an episode in the Netflix series Ray and a thriller Monica, O My Darling, also for the same streamer.
He has co-written screenplays for a few important films, from Psycho Raman to '83.
Jigra is Bala's biggest film, with a top banner and Bollywood's leading female star.
Bala takes on the prison break genre, common in Hollywood films and television shows, but never approached in Hindi cinema with such a definite sprit.
The film has all the masala elements common to the genre, with some implausible situations, but it holds your attention, especially during the explosive finale.
Bala's screenplay and direction play with the genre and ultimately, he delivers a very solid entertainer.
The action sequences, the way they are shot and edited work pretty much because of Bhatt's commanding performance.
In her new avatar, the Bollywood star is now an action queen, a one-woman army.
Only a fearless director like Bala with the backing of his producer Karan Johar could imagine and convincingly portray this gender twist in a Hindi action film.
But Bala has created a woman action star in the past as well.
In Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota, both his leads, played by Radhika Madan and Abhimanyu Dasani, practiced martial arts.
Satya is not alone in her quest.
She is aided by a group of well-meaning supporting characters, played by Manoj Pahwa and Rahul Ravindran.
But she has an unstoppable conviction that no matter what she will free her brother from the prison. And you want her to succeed because it is truly sad to see Raina's Ankur in a helplessly difficult situation.
The songs in the film, written by Varun Grover, have been playing in my head since I left the theatre, especially Tenu Sang Rakhna.
Towards the middle of the film, we hear the HRHK song Phoolon Ka Taaron Ka, this time sung by Raina.
The context is similar.
The bond between two siblings and as one tries to rescue the other.
But it is the emotional thread the song builds to Dev Anand's 53-year-old classic from my teenage years that touched my heart.
